Taseer assassination case to be heard in-camera

Islamabad: An in-camera hearing into the Salmaan Taseer assassination case will be conducted at Adiyala Jail on January 24.

Earlier this month, Taseer was assassinated by Malik Mumtaz Qadri, one of his own elite security force protectors, who opened fire on him because of the governor’s support for the release of Pakistani-Christian woman Asia Bibi, who has been sentenced to death on blasphemy charges.

The decision to hold an in-camera proceeding came after the January 5 fiasco at the Islamabad District Court, where Qadri was welcomed and showered with rose petals by his supporters.

In the all-out confusion that prevailed that day, some news photographers even tried to climb up the Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) to take Qadri’s photographs.

As a result, the police resorted to dodging the media persons while transferring Qadri to the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) in Rawalpindi on January 13.

OB vans had been stationed outside Iqbal Hall waiting for Qadri to show up, who was taken to the ATC Rawalpindi in a separate Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC). Subsequently, making the electronic media go through the hassle of changing places, the police were successful in reducing the number of mediapersons at the ATC.

Later, when the news spread that the police were shifting Qadri to the Pakistan Institute for Medical Sciences for an examination, the OB vans started to camp at the hospital in the evening. At midnight, at least three ambulances and an APC showed up and rushed to PIMS’ emergency ward.

Within seconds, reporters were on-air giving details of what was going on in the emergency ward where Qadri was being ‘examined’, while in reality, the assassin had already been shifted to the police station by that time. The ambulances that media focused and reported on were empty.